ArticlePLoS computational biology2017
Spatial dynamics of synthetic microbial mutualists and their parasites.
Article in PLoS computational biology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed.
- Mesolens imaging in microbiology.Essays in biochemistry · 2026Review
- Neutral theory of cooperative dynamics.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Advances in synthetic microbial ecosystems approach for studying ecological interactions and their influencing factors.Engineering microbiology · 2025Review
- Uptake and leakage rates differentially shape community arrangement and composition of microbial consortia.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Deciphering microbial spatial organization: insights from synthetic and engineered communities.ISME communications · 2025Review
- Synthetic Ecosystems: From the Test Tube to the Biosphere.ACS synthetic biology · 2024Review
- Quantifying the fractal complexity of nutrient transport channels inMicrobiology (Reading, England) · 2024Article
- Mutualism at the leading edge: insights into the eco-evolutionary dynamics of host-symbiont communities during range expansion.Journal of mathematical biology · 2024Article
- Oxidative stress changes interactions between 2 bacterial species from competitive to facilitative.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- A synthetic microbial Daisyworld: planetary regulation in the test tube.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Article
- Calibrating spatiotemporal models of microbial communities to microscopy data: A review.PLoS computational biology · 2022Review
- Ecological firewalls for synthetic biology.iScience · 2022Article
- Antagonism between killer yeast strains as an experimental model for biological nucleation dynamics.eLife · 2021Article
- Towards a deeper understanding of microbial communities: integrating experimental data with dynamic models.Current opinion in microbiology · 2021Review
- Synthetic Symbiosis under Environmental Disturbances.mSystems · 2020Article
- Synthetic Biology for Terraformation Lessons from Mars, Earth, and the Microbiome.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Cooperation mitigates diversity loss in a spatially expanding microbial population.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- Cellular heterogeneity results from indirect effects under metabolic tradeoffs.Royal Society open science · 2019Article
- Bottom-Up Approaches to Synthetic Cooperation in Microbial Communities.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Review
- Synthetic Mutualism and the Intervention Dilemma.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
A major force contributing to the emergence of novelty in nature is the presence of cooperative interactions, where two or more components of a system act in synergy, sometimes leading to higher-order, emergent phenomena. Within molecular evolution, the so called hypercycle defines the simplest model of an autocatalytic cycle, providing major theoretical insights on the evolution of cooperation in the early biosphere. These closed cooperative loops have also inspired our understanding of how catalytic loops appear in ecological systems. In both cases, hypercycle and ecological cooperative loops, the role played by space seems to be crucial for their stability and resilience against parasites. However, it is difficult to test these ideas in natural ecosystems, where time and spatial scales introduce considerable limitations. Here, we use engineered bacteria as a model system to a variety of environmental scenarios identifying trends that transcend the specific model system, such an enhanced genetic diversity in environments requiring mutualistic interactions. Interestingly, we show that improved environments can slow down mutualistic range expansions as a result of genetic drift effects preceding local resource depletion. Moreover, we show that a parasitic strain is excluded from the population during range expansions (which acknowledges a classical prediction). Nevertheless, environmental deterioration can reshape population interactions, this same strain becoming part of a three-species mutualistic web in scenarios in which the two-strain mutualism becomes non functional. The evolutionary and ecological implications for the design of synthetic ecosystems are outlined.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.